


Even the Traders Shall Quit the Sea

by Kimbeen



Category: Maurice (1987), Maurice - E. M. Forster
Genre: But you don't have to be familiar, Daniel Davey, Domesticity, If you don't hello!, If you know them great, In the universe of A Happier Year, M/M, Maurice POV, Orignial Characters - Freeform, Sally Manders, War What War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-18
Updated: 2020-04-18
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:07:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23716426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kimbeen/pseuds/Kimbeen
Summary: In which there's a little study on The Ifs of History. Maurice and Alec are in London, fixing a hole where the rain gets in.
Relationships: Maurice Hall/Alec Scudder
Comments: 14
Kudos: 39





	Even the Traders Shall Quit the Sea

**Author's Note:**

> This is a piece I wrote some time ago, according to my notes, and for the life of me couldn't shoehorn it into [A Happier Year](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5114666/chapters/11766953), it was a digression too far even for me. Here, I've given it a bit of a polish and it's just a wee bit of fluff now.
> 
> Please no reposting on this or other websites without my consent.

Good grief. At what point, do you wonder, do a few loose odds and ends become clutter, and clutter conjure into mess, and mess into a bloody nuisance? Probably at the point where the spare room is so wedged with needless, but very solid and protruding miscellanea, that one can’t fully open the door.

Spare room – hark at me. Was it heck is like. Our flat didn’t have one bedroom, leave alone the luxury of a spare – really it was more of a decent-sized wardrobe. Heaven knows how we managed to keep any guests in there happy for any length of time, but maybe they weren’t fussy (they had, after all, us for friends), and maybe they were busy (they had, after all, a bed, as Alec said). In truth this room was made more for things than people, and not many things, what’s more, which was exactly what we didn’t have.

All sorts of items were crammed into this cubby-hole, useless in ways ranging from the ludicrously decorative, to the archaic and outmoded, to the outright broken. A knacker’s yard of jumble. There was a mixture of things, grime-coated, from when we originally moved oh-so-hastily in, alongside more pieces accumulated since, no less dirty or rusty.

Et pourquoi? The old bicycle frame, cracked china animals, empty beehive, worn and tattery red and black Victorian ballgown? Bought at markets, from hobby-shop windows, police auctions? A shrewd tap on the nose was the only answer. Never did any of these things come forward to give truth to this confidence. Probably for the best, in the case of the last on that list.

“This is all rubbish, really, try as we might to justify, to home. We ought to dump the lot of it, hire a cart and have done with it.”

“No! Never know when you might need summat for a rainy day.” Alec’s shoulders were set and cramped for the lack of room as he lowered himself into the debris to extract a shepherd’s crook that was splintered in half; a stone bearing the curved, shell-shape of a fossil; a broken spinning-wheel; a small glass butter-churn; a brown globe in a wooden frame that still had the dotted line around the Holy Roman Empire.

“What kind of rainy day are you envisioning?” I bumped the velvet lampshade as I climbed to the door.

But eventually came the day when there was no room for Alec’s new fishing-rods and pristine wicker equipment basket, hooks and feathers and nets and bait that he’d likely admire more than use.

Anyway, that put the kibosh on the collection of wreckage.

“Junk.” Alec threw a glass-domed clock behind him.

“Rubbish.” A large, leather-bound book, pages flapping.

“Flap-doodle.” An egg beater.

I ducked my head: “Well, _now_ it is,” as it clattered to the floor.

Still, there was a change in Alec with a new pursuit, always was. From lassitude to high animation as soon as something new and shiny took his interest. In which case I shall have to keep myself well-polished.

“No you won’t, you wally,” Alec said, muffled as he rooted in the tiny fireplace for more hodgepodge, down on his hunkers, sleeves rolled up. “I’ll hang onto you now. It’d be too much trouble to break in a new boy.”

“The song of office managers around the world,” I said from my seated vantage upon the tallboy, by the torn ladies’ changing screen decorated with a Japanese landscape. The previous tenants of 5B must have been some pretty vigorous market-traders. Even collected drawers full of monogrammed handkerchiefs, all the letters of the alphabet – always ready for the discerning shopper!

Alec pulled out a painting from the fireplace and stood to hold it in the sunlight. I hopped down off the chest to have a look.

It was a pastoral scene, a garden, though there was a pleasing wildness to the leaves on the trees and the plentiful flowers, scattered; earnest daubs and strokes and scrapes of paint. Up in the sky, the thick clouds were akin to our own outside the window – on the canvas they appeared to be moving, edging to let down more sunshine onto the pair standing on the middle-ground, just to the left of the centre, so your eyes sought them first as in the opening pages of a book. They were affecting interest in the flowers, as if a nature stroll was the purpose and reason for their encounter; but really, they were talking, engaging, the most natural human enterprise, connecting, as right as the water flowing from the root to the petal of the roses around them.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” I said. “The blush of colour.”

“Reminds me of summer in the countryside, all the bloomers. Imagine the smell! S’pose a picture’s the next best thing.”

“Isn’t it rather lovely to see a relationship between men depicted so tenderly? Even in a moment of shy courtesy.”

“Men? One o’them’s a girl.”

“What?” 

Alec nodded at the picture. “The one on t’right, that’s a lass, that is.”

I took the frame and peered closer. “Oh.. So it is. Pass the glasses. I suppose I was just seeing what I wanted to see!” I looked at the painting again, just with one eye, then the other. No good – can’t un-see it, once it’s pointed out. “Still. Wouldn’t it be lovely if it was accepted, seen as normal and natural – the love between men?”

“Hmm, I dunno, I’ve mixed feelings abou’ that. After all, if that were the case, we’d hardly be together, would we?”

My blood ran cold. “ _What_?!”

  
“I mean..” Alec waved a hand. “If it were perfectly usual and run-o’-the-mill and ordinary to take up wi’a man as easy as a woman, then you’d be with Clive.”

“I… No.”

“Nowt stoppin’ ye. Or if not him, then someone else you met at college or work or... Comin’-out ball or summat, specially for blokes. If you’d been satisfied and coupled, I doubt your eyes would’ve run to me!”

My arms went weak and the painting slid down to my side; my stomach suddenly sick. “What are you talking about, Alec. Are you saying I’m just with you out of desperation?! Because of the absence of any other man of my acquaintance thus inclined? I do hope not, because I take it as a huge insult. We are to be _married_ , wrenched boy, that wasn’t a whim. I meant it. I hope you did too.”

“’Course I did, and I do and I will forever. I’m not saying we’re not cozied up.” His hand on his hip, he scratched his head with the other, under his cap. “All I’m saying is – well, you said it yourself. A chance in a thousand.”

  
“You liked me saying that. I thought it was romantic.”

“Maybe it were also statistically accurate.” He smiled so cheekily at his own joke, but the sight of his darling face was painful now and I looked away as we carried all the junk out of the flat and down the stairs to leave by the corner for the dustman. Alec passed easily through the doorway; I bashed my head on the lintel as always.

Blow him! So, Alec seemed to think that it was our shared roles as outcasts, deviants, dwellers beyond the fringe that had brought us together; whereas I fancied pure fate.

Yet.. If one stops to think on it. What if..?

What if our inversion – wasn’t considered to be so? What if congenital homosexuality was no more an issue than hair-colour, had long ago ceased to be strange and was now commonplace. And – I and Alec – and Clive – and Risley – and everyone had grown up seeing male-male couples, and female-female ones too, trotting mundanely alongside the female-male, and we were all aware of famous, accomplished men with husbands, and read books and looked at paintings and listened to music by women, dedicated to their wives.

If it was normal as nature – why not all the creeds - teachers, politicians, policemen, artists, workers, loungers – parents? Somehow? It sounds like a Utopia. Just imagine. In my youth, I should have fallen undramatically in and out of love with any number of boys, with no anxiety. I should not have felt so alienated by women, or threatened by knowing, lecherous old men.

And.

And yes, maybe in this make-believe land, Clive would not have been so accustomed to climbing the walls and would have allowed himself to love me, properly. We were so different, in terms of personality, but if each of us had grown up more relaxed, accepted, open, confident in our desires and not feeling terrified and freakish... Less tortured... Maybe we could have nullified and dashed away those discrepancies between us by giving vent to our passion. Isn’t that what Alec and I had done?

That Alec. I looked over at his young, tired face as we reached our landing and he rummaged out his keys, yawning. He unlocked the door and held it open for me to go through before him.

Suppose Clive and I had met at college as we did, but this time around, we fell in public love to the amused, fond delight of our friends, peers, parents, well-wishers and society at large – “a good match!” – and we billed and cooed and courted quite shamelessly – carriage-rides, parasols in the park, nights at the theatre. Clive called on me at the Gardens with a shy smile and flowers; I visited him at Penge, wide-eyed, bashful hat in hand and dancing-shoes in my luggage.

If so – if I were not a mere guest but the master’s fiancé - would, indeed, I even have noticed Alec the way I did when I was thoroughly miserable? Or would he just have been part of the furniture, the workforce, invisibly making the scene more comfortable for Mr Clive Durham, Esquire?

And what _of_ Alec? In this free-flowing world of no restrictions, would he even have been at Penge? Would he be partnered up? And with whom? Man or woman? There’s a difference between Alec and I – emotional action. Where he took all of life’s delights openly, willingly, eagerly, like birthday gifts of which he was perfectly deserving, I was a bit more ‘Mother-may-I’, that’s for true.

Certainly, if Alec didn’t have to sneak around to find fun and companionship with another fellow, he would have had options to the horizon, goodness. Could have had his pick of anyone in the village. No-one would be safe!

For definite, he would have had no call, no _need_ to creep up a ladder and into a bedroom, one which would have been empty anyway, were I away in the master-bedroom twinned to Clive, likely snoring away, quite a ways away from calling out of windows, breath carrying cries towards the lonely dark hills.

I barely slept a wink that night, and could hardly speak to Alec in the morning, he so resembled a ghost even as he clattered about tidying plates and checking pockets and kissing me good-bye. I replied in absent kind.

At work, I twisted my fingers on my desk-papers, tormented still. Yes, I had gotten my man. But why did it feel like I had done so by only a whisker? I longed for the age of social equality, for all sexual-preferences, but what if it then threw the class chasm between Alec and I into sharper contrast?

Oh, it was hell to feel such anguish over the one thing in life that brought the greatest joy. Chain-smoking brought no answers. I went to consult Davey.

I guessed he was working late that day, and I got off the bus two stops early to go to the factory and ask for him at the large iron dispatch door in the yard. He came and listened carefully to my woes, arms folded, looking at the ground.

When I trailed off, he said, “You’re some lúdramán, so you are, to be fussing and fretting over something that hasn’t happened and never will happen. Aren’t the pair of ye going to be hitched – don’t lose the wagon down the mountain, now!” He grinned, then his hand to his chin and the other arm folded behind his back as he strode the length of the puddled yard, I following. “But I understand your mellies. ‘Tis a mystery, alright. How and why do things happen at-all at-all? The Lord God told us what _did_ happen, way back in the long ago, but he didn’t let on what _will_ happen, in the forward, for us to keep half an eye out, d’you know the way. He must’ve forgot to write it down.”

Davey turned and poked my shoulder. “But I do think the two of ye are together out of fate, meant-like. And if you want me to be more concrete, well, I can tell you that I know Alec, and I know you a bit, and ye’re fair suited. Even if, as you said in your wonderings, you had shacked up with old Clive proper, and Alec was abroad doing God-knows-what or -who; still and all, ye would’ve found a way to each other. You’d still be you, and he’d be – he. Don’t forget, Alec is a very determined lad.” Nodded affirmation.

“Yes..”

“And anyway, Durham is _such_ a crashing bore. Stuffed-shirt, tweedy-pants.. There’s no contest. Don’t go thinking such dark thoughts like you’d be stuck with him forever, Jaysus.”

“Yes. Well. Thanks for the vote of confidence, Davey. See you later.”

“Good luck.” Davey tipped his cap and walked away, waving a hand. “Cheers for these.” For I had offered him a cigarette for his time, then gave him the whole box to share some goodwill among his mates.

Bolstered, and yet still having more room for boosting, I went to see Sally at the bustling, fragrant Covet Garden markets. She was even more pragmatic, perhaps a little too much so.

Hardly had I expressed my worries about the wonder and yet fearful unlikelihood of love conquering all than she nodded frantically and said: “Well that’s _easy_ to explain away. Have you heard of General Relativity?”

“No, who’s he?”

“It is a philosophical theory which posits that the only thing _truly_ real and rocky and unchangeable is –” she tapped her boot on the cobblestones – “gravity. All else –” she waved a hand, petals flew – “is flux.”

“… And?!”

“Well, if all time and space is relative, then certain realities are tied to their own particular universe. Theories are surfacing, lately, that lay claim to _infinite_ parallel universes, in which every conceivable thing has happened, is happening, will happen. You follow.”

“Good God, Sally. No.”

“You ought to be pleased that you are in a reality where you and Alec are together!”

“You mean there are ones where we aren’t? Not very reassuring.”

“Oh, don’t worry, old sport.” She chomped on a wine-gum. “They don’t matter. They run parallel, see? They can’t touch us.”

It wasn’t exactly the idea of being attacked by a rogue universe that so disquieted me; still I squared my shoulders to bid my goodbyes.

“Thanks Sally. Food for thought. I’ll be off.”

She tipped her head. “Buy some flowers?”

“Oh, no thanks.”

She kept her expression. “Try again?”

“Oh! Er – yes. Yes, please. A great big bunch of them.”

When she handed them to me, I waved them at passers-by. “By Jove! What flowers these are! Out of all I’ve ever seen, these are – _these are –_ absolutely top drawer!”

“Pathetic!” Sally whispered to me. Well, all press is good press!

Thus did I wend my way around the city centre for a bit. I didn’t want to go home yet. Suddenly my time with Alec seemed finite, and out-of-grasp; a prize I hadn’t won, a reward I’d not earned, so I walked a little aimlessly, past banks, shops, cafes, empty playing-courts, a church. There I slowed, and from within I could hear a choir practising. High sweet voices in harmony reminded me of school, of Cambridge, of rules and regulations and Should and Ought and Marching in Line.

When I finally made my winding way home, he was waiting at the flat for me. Not just sitting, idling away the time until my return, the window open to let in the crackling sounds of the neighbours’ wireless; but quite deliberately and stiffly he sat on the kitchen chair, hands on his knees, patient. As I came through the door and tossed down my keys, he rose slowly, came over and stood in front of me, and looked up at me, the dark eyes well aware.

He reached down and took the flowers from my hand. “Thank you.”

“Who says they’re for you?” I hung up my coat as he laughed and put the flowers in a jug.

Back he came and stood before me. Gently, he touched his thumbs to the bags under my eyes. “What ails thee? There’s been a cloud hangin’ over you since yesterday. You tell me what’s gone skewed and I’ll fix it.” His big smile encouraging.

“You can’t really. Nothing’s broken. Just me and my usual nonsense. Paranoia.”

“Over what exactly?”

“What you said yesterday evening about how – we’re from two different worlds, really. And how dashed unlikely and unrealistic it is that we found each other, that we love each other.”

“Oh Maurice.” He laughed, looked away and back again. “Pet! How you do twist. T’former – mebbes, but the next? Unrealistic, you say, lovin’ you? Hardly. No – the love is fine. It’s the getting there what beats me! Seems fantastical – but it were always going to happen. Don’t you understand, I spent me whole life lookin’ for you, before even knowin’ who you were gonna be? Till I saw you.” He folded his arms, satisfaction. “Wasn’t gonna be doin’ without you. Don’t care if I were supposed to sail away and become King of Argentina.”

I leaned on the bookshelf, some tension in my body easing. “Sally and Davey agree that there is an element of determinism to our meeting – of inevitability.”

“They said that? Well that settles it. That’s it exactly, then – it weren’t so, till we made it so.”

This seemed actually to contradict abstract philosophical forces, in favour of staunch human will – but it was more comforting an aspect. I liked the idea of Alec and I meeting by chance, yes, but then electing to build our relationship from the foundation up.

In the long evening shadows, still warm on our coats, I took Alec back the way I’d come, back to the church to listen to the music and feel the past; he felt it too, was thoughtful. In the side-porch, we both leaned our elbows in the sill of an open stained-glass window, silent as we listened – the song-voices tentative at first, up and down like a boat on the water, the notes of the organ trickling around them, picking their steps as they – we – journeyed, meandered, grew confident, rose, grew higher in pitch, strong and soft, slow and hypnotic. The stodgy reassurance of religious tradition, yet the bright optimism and freedom of music, of angels in flight. We were human, it couldn’t exclude us. _In Paradisum Faure Requiem._

“We used to sing this at college,” I whispered to Alec.

“Yeh? Did you like it, singing?”

“Yes.”

He moved his hand over the cold stone, laced his fingers with mine, looked back into the church. “I get your misgivin’s. You left Clive so sudden. I mean – he left you. I know that. I knew it were a wrench; you were ripped away from him. I found you – a little injured.”

I waited.

Candlelight moved on his face. “So I always knowed I’d to help you. And it suits me fine.” He put his hand on my arm, then slid it up my shoulder to touch my face. “I like havin’ someone to dote over. You fit the bill wholesale.”

“You too.. I was waiting for you, too.”

“Well, I believe in luck. Got to be, ain’t it? Couldn’t have carved you more perfect from scratch out of clay.” He leaned in closer. “And as to practical… We got so many years ahead of us to get through. Decades.” His eyes sought mine. “I’ll see you through every single one of ‘em. Honest promise.”

Easy, even astute to believe him, with the swelling music all around, even after the choir had retired.

“Oh look, they’re thinkin’ of us.” Alec nodded to the wooden box in the porch, above which a brass plate pleaded, ‘For the Poor and Needy.’ “Aren’t people kind!”

“Yes, they are.”

He rocked a bit on his heels, then quickly dropped a coin into the box, pushed his hands back in his pockets, and nudged me back into the outside.

**Author's Note:**

> The painting is 'Picking Flowers' (1875) by Renoir


End file.
